0429 - Perdigões and its idols

0424 - "Sun eyes"

This is one more schematic anthropomorphic figurine from the context of depositions of human cremated remains in the central area of Perdigões ditched enclosures. This one, from 2019 campaign of excavations, just missed the  exhibition of Iberian Prehistoric Idols that recently opened in Alicante, where some of its companions from the same context are present.

0364 - They keep appearing.

At Perdigões enclosure we are now studying the several funerary structures in the context of the project “Mobility and Interaction in South Portugal RecentPrehistory: the role of aggregation centers”. One of the structures is Pit 40, where cremated human remains were deposited. There are thousands of small fragments of burned bones that are being studied in anthropological terms, and among them fragments of ivory items, also burned, keep appearing.

Several represent parts of anthropomorphic figurines like the ones from the same general context already studied and published (Valera & Evangelista, 2014).

Here is the head of one that lost its face. It presents the hair, the ears and even the final traces of the facial tattoos.

A head like the best preserved one, only smaller.

Number of these figurines is now higher than what it was published and will probably grow as the study of the bone fragments progress. The figurines, like the human bodies, are all in small fragments and burned. Would have this analogy been intentional?

On the contrary, the exception above, when deposited, was intentionally completed in a broken leg with a burned white bone (see publication). Body segmentation and body integrity, parts and wholes. Or windows to the Neolithic mind. Something to be discussed in a coming workshop in Lisbon.

0259 - Interesting...

... finding regarding the figurines from Perdigões enclosure here.

0245 – Paper on Perdigões human figurines

A paper on the ivory human figurines from the ditched enclosure of Perdigões has just been published here.

These figurines came from the contexts with depositions of human cremations (still in excavation) that were dated by radiocarbon from middle / third quarter of the 3rd millennium BC.

0076 - Animal figurines at Perdigões

A paper is in press about the ivory animal figurines at Perdigões enclosure. These are very small sculptures of several animals (ox, deer, birds, rabbit and a possible pig) that have between 1 and 2 cm.

If one of them might be attached to a larger artefact, the others seem to be independent objects.
Why are they so small?
Why, in a period of schematic art, are they so realistic?

They resemble the small animal figurines of Dorset culture (Arctic hunters and gatherers) and its animistic context of function and meaning described by Tim Ingold. Could a similar line of inquiry share some light over the Perdigões ones?

I do believe animistic thought and its world views are an indispensable approach to understand much of the problems that we are confronted with at Perdigões set of enclosures.